Tuesday, August 31, 2010

BGS: Layout, Color Key, Finished Painting

I wanted my Yogis to have some feeling of the original 195-1960 cartoons. I didn't want them to be like the 1970s, an 80s redos where the characters try to be be with the times. No cleaning up the environment or riding skateboards - and no pink purple and lime green airbrushed bgs. I got Ed Benedict to do some of the background layouts and design and he drew them in pretty much the style he drew in the 1950s. Trying to get the painting style down was tougher.Here's a beautiful painting - I think by Richard Daskas that is sort of half Ren and Stimpy style, half early Hanna Barbera. It wasn't until Boo Boo Runs Wild that I thought we got the finished BG style to look like the Art Lozzi/ Montealegre techniques I so admire.Here's my key. This is from a scene that was cut from Ranger Smith's Day In The Life for time. It had RS inspecting the underwater world and making sure the fish were obeying the rules of the scummy lake bottom. Even scum has to have rules and order in Smith's world.

I think the BGs used in the Ranger Smith/Yogi shorts matched the character designs just right. They both came as close as they should have to the original look. Just enough to add a Spumco feel to the HB style without reminding us of the cut-rate versions used in the 70s. Too bad anything had to be cut from the Ranger Smith one, it always felt a short as it is.

Good BG painting takes a whole different skill than even drawing the layout of it. I still haven't developed the skill of setting up the coloring myself, though I do fairly well copying existing ones.

Knowing how and where to put the brush strokes and color shifts into it is not as easy as it looks.

it´s beautyfull the way it seams organized the production system in the U.S, or any other country for tht matter...in brazil, except for some very determined studios and artists the background painting and layout would be done by the same person, and in kind of a hurry...it´s nice to see that you can only animate or direct or paint and not have to be half-good in all of those things.